Christian Zionists
Reader comment on item: The Bible's Role in American Support for Israel

Submitted by Bart Willruth (United States), Aug 31, 2006 at 10:51

I wish to take issue with the comfort level you and others have with the Christian support of Israel. As a stance grounded in irrationality, the views of some Christians that Israel has a place in God's plan is amorphous. Several points need to be kept in mind.

Roman Catholic Christianity has no place whatsoever for a role for Israel in God's plan in the Christian era. In the Church's view, ancient Israel has been supplanted in God's plan by the Church. Period.

The Christian denominations of the Protestant reformation, the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions, have a more fully developed theology of Israel's place in God's plan. Oversimplifying the subject, they believe that God had a covenant with ancient Israel until the rejection of Jesus as the promised Messiah. At that time, all of the promises of the covenant were universalized to apply to any believer in Jesus. Corporately, all believers, that is the church, are the new Israel. Simultaneously, all the curses of the ancient covenant for unbelief were laid upon Israel, permanently. Thus, a Jewish Israel, in their theology, has no place in God's plan, although individual Jews can be saved through conversion.

That leaves the Evangelical and/or pentacostal Protestants. This group is highly emotive, generally poorly educated, and easily led by Charismatic preachers such as Pat Robertson et al. Again, simplifying the issue, even within this group of supporters of a Jewish Israel, their view of the state of Israel in God's plan ultimately will end in the conversion of some of the Jews and the corresponding destruction of those who will not accept Jesus.

While they currently have a convoluted method of Biblical interpretation leading them to believe that the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy, that notion is simply a current interpretation. Prior to the time that Israel was becoming a state, this same group regularly proclaimed that the curse of God rested upon the Jews. Some said that God would never allow Israel to become a nation again, because an alternate interpretation of Biblical verses indicated that God cursed the unbelieving Jews to wander the earth without a homeland until the end of time. The thought leaders in this group are masters of expediency. They want to find fulfillment of prophecy in current events. As time goes by and events require it, they can change their interpretations on a whim and their followers, being sheep, will follow without shame.

I believe it is dangerous for Israel and its supporters to rely upon a group which at the moment is a friend, but which could suddenly change. Furthermore, the hidden agenda of this group that the re-establishment of Israel is to give the Jews one more chance to accept Christian salvation, makes them disingenuous friends at best. Do they believe there is salvation for the Jews outside of faith in Jesus? NO. Do they expect the majority of Jews to remain unbelieving and thus to deserve and receive God's death sentence? YES. Friends indeed...

Bart Willruth, M Div

Former Christian theologian

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Daniel Pipes replies:

You write that "it is dangerous for Israel and its supporters to rely upon a group which at the moment is a friend, but which could suddenly change."

Every ally can become an enemy; but I do not see how a beseiged Israel can afford to worry so much about its current ally in the future that it refuses that ally's help at present.